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Quality Housing: Perception and Insights of People in Benin City, Nigeria

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Abstract

The need to ensure the production of quality housing has been of remarkable interest to the government of Nigeria, as housing quality is considered to be a symbol of a country with an effective housing delivery system. However, government policy responses to the need to provide quality housing achieved little or nothing. Indeed, the actual provision of housing came nowhere close to the targets specified in the national housing policy. Many houses in Nigeria are obtained through other modes of formal and informal delivery processes, which influence the timing, quality, location and cost of housing. Moreover, there is little consensus on what constitutes ‘quality’ housing, and why different forms of housing delivery—within the public and private sectors—are predominantly failing to deliver what people consider to be ‘quality’. This study was conducted to provide insights on how different stakeholders perceive and make sense of quality housing, and these stakeholders include tenants, home-owners, government officials and Community Development Associations (CDAs) in Benin City. This was achieved through the analysis of data generated from the semi-structured interviews. This paper contributes to knowledge by providing newer dimensions to which housing quality can be defined as one which is spacious, clean, accessible and habitable in terms of the finesse of the interior of the building. It should have good water supply and electricity supply; the environment should be quiet and conducive and the structure/building or house should be accessible by roads. It should be secured and comfortable.

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Notes

  1. Building materials that lack structural strength and functionality in addition to the influx of poor quality materials into the Nigeria market which are hard to differentiate from the original ones (Ezeanah 2018).

  2. The Binis are a cultural group living in or around Benin City in Nigeria. They are an ethnic group of the population of Benin City.

  3. This neighbourhood reflects in a very distinctive manner a mix of the different socio-economic levels; here, we have a mix the low-, middle- and high-income earners respectively.

  4. It is mainly characterized by middle-income earners and some low-income earners due to the presence of the civil servants as reported from the responses of interviewees.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the support of my supervisors Dr. Tom Goodfellow and Dr. Paula Meth, University of Sheffield, for their constructive feedback during my PhD. Financial support was received from International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (FURS Writing-up grant) and the Faculty of Social Science Research Support Scheme, University of Sheffield, during the course of my PhD Studies.

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  1. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Jos, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria

    Uyi Ezeanah

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Ezeanah, U. Quality Housing: Perception and Insights of People in Benin City, Nigeria. Urban Forum 32, 87–110 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-020-09409-1

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